I’ve always been inspired by the annual Pink Shirt Day, which was held on Wednesday this year.
It’s good to see school kids, as well as adults in work places, get into the spirit of the day and support each other by wearing pink shirts.
I covered the education beat in Nanaimo for many years and I always enjoyed going into the schools and talking to the students about their preparations for Pink Shirt Day.
It was impressive to see so many of these kids enthusiastically embrace the anti-bullying message, and the school hallways were typically full of pink shirts on one day each February.
As I’ve mentioned before in this column, I spent much of my early education attending all-boys schools, and I found that bullying was rampant in an environment where boys didn’t have girls to distract them.
I’ve seen schoolmates so tormented by bullies that they would get physically sick just thinking of going to school.
To see kids stand up for their peers and say this is just not acceptable is heartening.
Pink Shirt Day is recognized and celebrated around the globe, but few people know that it began by a group of kids in a small town, called Berwick, in Nova Scotia in 2007.
At the time, high-school students David Shepherd, Travis Price and their teenage friends organized a protest in their school to have students wear pink in sympathy with a Grade 9 boy who was being bullied for wearing a pink shirt.
The group went to a discount store, bought dozens of pink shirts and handed them out the next day at the school.
Their schoolmates got into the spirit of the moment and the pink shirts were scooped up quickly and worn by many of them.
It’s been reported that Travis Price, who was just 17 at the time, said that when the bullied boy walked into the school and saw what was happening, his face spoke volumes.
“It looked like a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders,” Price said.
“The bullies were never heard from again.”
I’ve not heard of either Price or Shepherd again since they inadvertently inaugurated Pink Shirt Day 12 years ago, but I can only imagine the two young men, who would be in about 30 years-old now, are proud that their efforts that day spawned an annual international event that is celebrated by thousands of people all over the globe.
It says a lot that these two guys and their friends grabbed the bull by the horns and stepped up to help one of their classmates who was targeted for bullying.
I think that if the school’s administration had come up with the idea, it would have probably died on the vine.
If there’s one thing that I remember about being a teenager is that I hated being told what to do by adults; which I recall was (and still is) a common trait of the young.
But the fact that Pink Shirt Day was initiated by kids their own age gave it a legitimacy and popularity that has been copied by youngsters everywhere, and has even spread into workplaces.
Unfortunately, people are still people so bullying still goes on, but at least we have the opportunity to see people stand up to it for at least one day of the year.
robert.barron@cowichanvalleycitizen.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter